Ancient Greek, in classical antiquity before the development of the Koiné (κοινή) as the lingua franca of Hellenism, was divided into several dialects. Likewise, Modern Greek is divided into several dialects, most of them deriving from the Koiné.

Contents 1 Provenance 2 Literature 3 Classification 3.1 Ancient perception 3.2 Modern Groups 4 Sound changes leading to dialectization 5 Post-Hellenistic 6 Notes 7 External links 7.1 Overviews 7.2 Inscriptions

[edit] Provenance

• The earliest known dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the language reconstructed from the Linear B tablets produced by the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in the late 2nd millennium BC. The classical distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age^[2] after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Some speakers of Mycenaean were displaced to Cyprus while others remained inland in Arcadia, giving rise to the Arcadocypriot dialect. This is the only dialect with a known Bronze-age precedent. The other dialects must have preceded their attested forms but the relationship of the precedents to Mycenaean remains to be discovered.

History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet)

Proto-Greek

Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)

Ancient Greek (c. 800–330 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Locrian, Pamphylian; Homeric Greek. Possibly Macedonian.

Koine Greek (c. 330 BC–330)*

Medieval Greek (330–1453)

Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Cappadocian, Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Yevanic This box: view • talk • edit *Dates (beginning with Ancient Greek) from D.B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids 1997), 12.

• Aeolic was spoken in three subdialects: one, Lesbian, on the island of Lesbos and the west coast of Asia Minor north of Smyrna. The other two, Boeotian and Thessalian, were spoken in the North-East of the Greek mainland (in Boeotia and Thessalia).
• The Dorian invasion spread Doric Greek from a probable northwest Greece location to the coast of the Peloponnesus; for example, to Sparta, to Crete and to the southernmost parts of the west coast of Asia Minor. North Western Greek is sometimes classified as a separate dialect, and is sometimes subsumed under Doric. Macedonian is regarded by some authors as another Greek dialect, possibly related to Doric or NW Greek.^[3].
• Ionic was mostly spoken along the west coast of Asia Minor, including Smyrna and the area to the south of it. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written in Homeric Greek (or Epic Greek), an early East Greek. Attic Greek, a sub- or sister-dialect of Ionic, was for centuries the language of Athens. Because Attic was adopted in Macedon before the conquests of Alexander the Great and the subsequent rise of Hellenism, it became the "standard" dialect that evolved into the Koiné.

[edit] Literature

See also: writers by dialect

Several literary genres are conventionally written in a specific style and dialect, that in which the genre originated, regardless the origin of later authors^[4]. Homeric Greek, which is imitated in later Epic poems, such as Argonautica and Dionysiaca, is an artificial mixture of dialects close to Ionic, Aeolic and Arcadocypriot^[5].

Archilochus of Paros is the oldest poet in Ionic proper. This dialect includes also the earliest Greek prose, that of Heraclitus and Ionic philosophers, Hecataeus and logographers, Herodotus, Democritus, and Hippocrates. Elegiac poetry originated in Ionia and always continued to be written in Ionic^[6][7].

Attic Orators,Plato,Xenophon and Aristoteles wrote in Attic proper, Thucydides in Old Attic, the dramatists in an artificial poetic language^[8] while the Attic Comedy contains several vernacular elements.

Doric is the conventional dialect of choral lyric poetry, which includes the Laconian Alcman, the Theban Pindar and the choral songs of Attic tragedy (stasima). Several lyric and epigrammatic poets wrote in this dialect, such as Ibycus of Rhegium and Leonidas of Tarentum. The following authors wrote in Doric, preserved in fragments: Epicharmus comic poet and writers of South Italian Comedy (phlyax play), Mithaecus food writer and Archimedes.

Aeolic is an exclusively poetic lyric dialect, represented by Sappho and Alcaeus for Aeolic (Lesbian) and Corinna of Tanagra for Boiotic. Thessalic, Northwest Doric, Arcado-Cypriot and Pamphylian never became literary dialects and are only known from inscriptions, and to some extent by the comical parodies of Aristophanes and lexicographers.

[edit] Classification

[edit] Ancient perception

The ancients classified the language into three gene or four dialects, Ionic (Attic), Aeolic, Doric and later a fifth one, Koine^[9][10]. Grammarians focus mainly on the literary dialects and isolated words. Historians may classify dialects on mythological/historical reasons rather than linguistic knowledge . According to Strabo, Ionic is the same as Attic and Aeolic the same as Doric - Outside the Isthmus, all Greeks were Aeolians except the Athenians, the Megarians and the Dorians who live about Parnassus - In the Peloponnese, Achaeans were also Aeolians but only Eleans and Arcadians continued to speak Aeolic^[11]. However for most ancients, Aeolic was synonymous with literary Lesbic^[12]. Stephanus of Byzantium characterized Boeotian as Aeolic and Aetolian as Doric^[13]. Remarkable is the ignorance of sources, except lexicographers, on Arcadian , Cypriot and Pamphylian.

Finally, unlike modern Greek^[14] and English, ancient Greek common terms for human speech, ( 'glôssa'^[15], 'dialektos'^[16], 'phônê'^[17] and the suffix '-isti' ) may be attributed interchangeably to both a dialect and a language. However, the plural 'dialektoi' is used, when comparing dialects and peculiar words are listed by the grammarians under the terms 'lexeis'^[18] or 'glôssai'^[19].

[edit] Modern Groups

The dialects of Classical Antiquity are grouped slightly differently by various authorities. Pamphylian is a marginal dialect of Asia Minor and is sometimes left uncategorized. Note that Mycenaean was only deciphered in 1952, and is therefore missing from the earlier schemes presented here.

Northwestern, Southeastern	Ernst Risch, Museum Helveticum (1955): Northern Greek Doric/North-Western Greek Aeolic Pamphylian? Southern Greek Ionic-Arcadian-Cyprian-Mycenaean	Alfred Heubeck: Northwestern group Doric/North-Western Greek Aeolic? Southeastern group Ionic-Attic Arcadocypriot
Western, Central, Eastern	A. Thumb, E. Kieckers, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (1932): Western Greek Doric dialects dialect of Achaia dialect of Elis North-Western Greek Central Greek Aeolic Boiotic Thessalic Lesbian Arcadocyprian Eastern Greek Ionic Attic Pamphylian	W. Porzig, Die Gliederung des indogermanischen Sprachgebiets (1954): Western Greek North-Western Greek Doric Aeolic Eastern Greek Ionic-Attic Arcadocyprian
East Greek West Greek	C.D. Buck, The Greek Dialects (1955)[20]: East Greek The Attic-Ionic Group Attic Ionic East Ionic Central Ionic West Ionic or Euboean The Arcado-cyprian Group Arcadian Cyprian Pamphylian The Aeolic Group Lesbian Thessalian Boeotian West Greek The NorthWest Greek Group Phocian (including Delphian) Locrian Elean The Northwest Greek koine The Doric Group Laconian and Heraclean Messenian Megarian Corinthian Argolic Rhodian Coan Theran and Cyrenaean Cretan Sicilian Doric

[edit] Sound changes leading to dialectization

The ancient Greek dialects were primarily phonemic and vocalic; that is, the dialects were recognized mainly by differences in vowels. These differences occurred as a result of the loss of intervocalic s, consonantal i and w from Proto-Greek. Such a loss brought two vocalic phonemes into juxtaposition, a circumstance often called "collision of vowels".^[21] For unknown reasons Greek speakers regarded two vowels together as some sort of impropriety and over time changed pronunciation to avoid it. The way in which they changed determined the dialect.

For example, the word for the god of the sea (regardless of the culture and language from which it came) was in some prehistoric form Poseidāwōn, genitive Poseidāwonos, dative Poseidāwoni, etc. Loss of the intervocalic w left Poseidāōn, which is found in both Mycenaean and epic. Ionic changes the a to an e: Poseideōn, while Attic contracts to Poseidōn. Additional dialectization: Corinthian Potedāwoni, becoming Potedāni and Potedān; Boeotian Poteidāoni; Cretan, Rhodian and Delphian Poteidān; Lesbian Poseidān; Arcadian Posoidānos; Laconian Pohoidān. From the dialects it can easily be seen that these isoglosses do not follow any node structure at all.

The unconscious object of these changes appears mainly to be the creation of one phoneme from two, a process called "contraction" if a third phoneme is created, or "hyphaeresis" ("taking away") if one phoneme is dropped and the other kept. Sometimes the two phonemes are kept, or are kept and modified, as in the Ionic Poseideōn.

Another principle of vocalic dialectization follows the Indo-European ablaut series or vowel grades. Indo-European could interchange e (e-grade) with o (o-grade) or not use either (zero-grade). Similarly Greek inherited the series (for example) ei, oi, i, which are e,-, o- and zero-grades of the diphthong respectively. They could appear in different verb forms: leipo "I leave", leloipa "I have left", elipon "I left", or be used as the basis of dialectization: Attic deiknumi "I point out" but Cretan diknumi.

[edit] Post-Hellenistic

The ancient Greek dialects were a result of isolation and poor communication between communities living in broken terrain. No general Greek historian fails to point out the influence of terrain on the development of the city-states. Often in the development of languages dialectization results in the dissimilation of daughter languages. This phase did not occur in Greek; instead the dialects were replaced by standard Greek.

Increasing population and communication brought speakers more closely in touch and united them under the same authorities. Attic Greek became the literary language everywhere. Buck says^[22]:

"… long after Attic had become the norm of literary prose, each state employed its own dialect, both in private and public monuments of internal concern, and in those of a more … interstate character, such as … treaties…."

In the first few centuries BCE regional dialects replaced local ones: North-west Greek koine, Doric koine and of course Attic koine. The latter came to replace the others in common speech in the first few centuries AD. After the division of the Roman Empire into east and west the earliest modern Greek prevailed. The dialect distribution was then as follows:

• Attic Greek
  • Koiné
    • Byzantine Greek language
      • Modern Greek
        • Demotic Greek
        • Katharevousa
      • Yevanic
      • Cypriot Greek
      • Cretan Greek
      • Griko (possibly with Doric elements)
    • Pontic Greek
    • Cappadocian Greek
    • Romano-Greek
    • Tsakonian

• Doric Greek
  • Tsakonian

According to some scholars, Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that descends from Doric rather than the Koine^[23]. Others believe it to be the descendant of the local Laconian, and thus Doric-influenced, variant of the Koine^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Notes

v • d • e Ages of Greek c. 2000 BC c. 1600–1100 BC c. 800–300 BC c. 300 BC – AD 330 c. 330–1453 since 1453 Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Greek Koine Greek Medieval Greek Modern Greek

v • d • e Ancient Greece topics Timeline Cycladic civilization · Minoan civilization · Mycenaean civilization · Greek Dark Ages · Archaic period · Classical Greece · Hellenistic Greece · Roman Greece Geography Aegean Sea · Hellespont · Macedonia · Sparta · Athens · Corinth · Thebes · Thermopylae · Antioch · Alexandria · Pergamon · Miletus · Ephesus · Delphi · Delos  · Olympia · Troy · Rhodes · Crete · Peloponnesus · Epirus · Cyprus Life Agriculture · Cuisine · Democracy · Economy · Education · Law · Medicine · Pederasty · Prostitution · Religion · Slavery · Technology · Olympic Games  · Warfare  · Wine People Philosophers Anaxagoras · Anaximander · Anaximenes · Antisthenes · Aristotle · Democritus · Diogenes of Sinope · Epicurus · Empedocles · Heraclitus · Leucippus · Gorgias · Parmenides · Plato · Protagoras · Pythagoras · Socrates · Thales · Zeno Authors Aeschylus · Aesop · Aristophanes · Euripides · Herodotus · Hesiod · Homer · Lucian · Menander · Pindar · Plutarch · Polybius · Sappho · Sophocles · Theognis of Megara · Thucydides · Xenophon Others Alexander the Great · Lycurgus · Leonidas · Alcibiades · Demosthenes · Pericles · Solon · Themistocles · Archimedes · Euclid · Hippocrates · Aspasia · Milo of Croton Buildings Parthenon · Temple of Artemis · Acropolis · Ancient Agora · Temple of Zeus at Olympia · Temple of Hephaestus · Samothrace temple complex Arts Architecture · Coinage · Literature · Music · Pottery · Sculpture · Theatre Language Proto-Greek · Mycenaean  · Homeric · Dialects (Aeolic • Arcadocypriot • Attic • Doric • Ionic • Locrian • Macedonian • Pamphylian) · Koine

[edit] External links

[edit] Overviews

• Griechische Dialekte und ihre Verteilung, Titus site, in German. List, map, table of features.
• Dialects of Greek, Kelley L. Ross. Map and brief description.
• Greek. Ethnologue report on modern Greek dialects and koine. Brief entries, catalog style.
• Excerpts from Margalit Finkelburg, Greeks and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic TraditionPDF (162 KiB). One of the topics is the origin of the dialects.

[edit] Inscriptions

• Searchable Greek Inscriptions. A considerable corpus of ancient Greek inscriptions in various dialects published by The Packard Humanities Institute.
• Inscriptions Listed by Region, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents site.